Videos in Blended Search

This post is a follow-up to last weeks post on Images in Blended Search. Today, however, we will focus on videos in blended search. As with last week’s analysis, we will look at 10 different search terms to see how each of the four largest search engines behave in response to those queries. Here is the raw data:

Here is a summary of the key things I found in looking at the above data:

Google and Yahoo truly blend their results into the web search results. In other words, one or more of the 10 blue links now is in fact now a video instead of a web site. This is probably because Google and Yahoo attempt to way the relevance of the video results in comparison with those of the web results.

Microsoft and Ask do not blend in the video results when you include the word “videos” in the search phrase. Instead, the videos are shown up above the search results. Evidently, Microsoft and Ask assume that when the query includes the word videos, that the most relevant thing to do is to show these results up top.

Microsoft and Ask do not show videos when presented with popular phrases that don’t include the word “videos”. Examples include “I have a dream”, “One small step for man”, “nosferatu”, etc. (in the case of I have a dream, Ask showed 2 videos over on the right rail).

Google and Yahoo do fail to show videos some of the time, even when the user’s query includes thw word “videos”. For example “alaska videos” (Google and Yahoo) and “rolling stones videos” (Google).

The data illustrates what an early state we are at with videos being blended into web search. There really is no reason not to show one or more videos to the user when the user includes the word “videos” in their query. Their intent has been made clear. On the other hand, if someone types in “one small step for man” or “I have a dream”, it would seem appropriate that one of the choices include a video.

Bottom line, none of the engines have this perfectly scoped out just yet, and there is lots of room for improvement. Nonetheless, the general notion of integrating video into web search results is definitely happening, and it’s a great step forward.